THE WORD OF GOD

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jn 1:1

AND THE WORD BECAME FLESH

“The conception and birth of Jesus Christ are in fact the greatest work accomplished by the Holy Spirit in the history of creation and salvation…”
Pope John Paul II, The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World (#50)

These two pictures show a hand reaching to touch another. The first is God’s hand reaching towards Adam’s. Dr. DeMarco in his article The Hand of Hope points out that in the first picture:

” Michelangelo depicts God the Creator vigorously thrusting the index finger of his right hand toward a reclining Adam, whose own hand withdraws just enough that a gap appears separating the author of life from his somewhat indecisive recipient. This gap symbolizes the drama of God and man, the divine and the human, the source of life and our hesitation in welcoming it.”

In commenting on the second picture Dr. DeMarco says:

“But such hesitation or reluctance does not apply to Samuel Alexander Armas. In a photograph which some observers say should be the “picture of the decade,” we see the tiny hand of Samuel when he was a 21-week-old fetus reaching up through an incision in his mother’s uterus and grabbing and squeezing the finger of the surgeon who had just performed a life-saving, though not life-forming, procedure.”

When Michael Clancy the photographer talked to the attending nurse about what had happened, she replied, rather matter-of-factly, “Oh, they do that all the time.”

Could little Samuel’s hand, and the hands of other unborn babies reaching out to touch us, be another way God’s hand is reaching out to a hesitant humanity? Or as Doctor DeMarco suggests in his article: “He represents life uncompromised. He is our pro-life role model.” A ‘little child shall lead us'(Is. 11:6). Samuel’s hand, grabbing hold of his physician’s hand, is a symbol of how our hands should reach out to grab The Divine Physician’s hand in love for life.